Programmable I/O card

The Mesa 5I23 from Mesa Electronics is a general-purpose programmable industrial I/O card for the PCI bus, while the Mesa 5I22 uses a 400K gate Xilinx FPGA for all logic and is described as an “Anything I/O” card. The FPGA configuration is downloadable from the PCI bus side, allowing creation of almost any type of I/O function, according to the company.

By Control Engineering Staff February 1, 2008

The Mesa 5I23 from Mesa Electronics is a general-purpose programmable industrial I/O card for the PCI bus, while the Mesa 5I22 uses a 400K gate Xilinx FPGA for all logic and is described as an “Anything I/O” card. The FPGA configuration is downloadable from the PCI bus side, allowing creation of almost any type of I/O function, according to the company. 5I23 uses three 50-pin connectors with I/O module rack compatible pin-outs and interleaved grounds. Each connector provides 24 I/O bits for a total of 72 programmable I/O bits. All are 5 V tolerant and can sink 12 mA. Pull-up resistors for all pins allow them to be connected directly to opto-isolators and contacts. Bus master and DMA capability permit fast PCI transfer rates. A 48 MHz crystal oscillator provides a reference clock that can be multiplied by the FPGA’s DLLs for higher clock speeds. www.mesanet.com Mesa Electronics